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A Flexible REST Api miniframework for Python.

Works great with Flask + Sqlalchemy

Using “formencode” library to validate data

Features

  • Small, fast codebase

  • JSON output by default, but overridable

  • RESTful

  • Flexible to override all rest actions

  • Flexible to add new actions

  • Flexible to add decorators on every actions

  • Python 2.6+

Why?

Quite simply, I care about creating flexible & RESTFul APIs. In building Tastypie, I tried to create something extremely complete & comprehensive. The result was writing a lot of hook methods (for easy extensibility) & a lot of (perceived) bloat, as I tried to accommodate for everything people might want/need in a flexible/overridable manner.

But in reality, all I really ever personally want are the RESTful verbs, JSON serialization & the ability of override behavior.

This one is written for me, but maybe it’s useful to you.

Manifesto

Rather than try to build something that automatically does the typically correct thing within each of the views, it’s up to you to implement the bodies of various HTTP methods.

Full flask example code:

from flask import Flask, Blueprint, redirect, url_for
from flask_login import LoginManager, current_user, login_user, logout_user, \
    login_required
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmaker
from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base
from sqlalchemy import Column, Integer, String, Unicode

from flexrest import RestApiResource, RestApiHandler, FlexRestManager

Base = declarative_base()


class User(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'users'

    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    username = Column(String(64), unique=True)
    password = Column(String(88))
    firstname = Column(Unicode(256))
    lastname = Column(Unicode(256))

    def get_id(self):
        return str(self.id)

    def is_authenticated(self):
        return True

    def is_anonymous(self):
        return False

    def is_active(self):
        return True

    def __repr__(self):
        return '<User %r>' % (self.username)


class Book(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'books'

    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    name = Column(String(64), unique=True)
    author = Column(String(88))

    def __repr__(self):
        return '<book %r>' % (self.name)


engine = create_engine('sqlite:///:memory:', echo=True)
DBSession = sessionmaker(bind=engine)
Base.metadata.create_all(engine)


def get_session():
    return DBSession()

dbs = get_session()
u1 = User(username='user1')
u2 = User(username='user2')
b1 = Book(name='book1')
b2 = Book(name='book2')
dbs.add_all([u1, u2, b1, b2])
dbs.commit()


def load_user(uid):
    dbs = get_session()

    user = dbs.query(User).get(uid)
    if not user or not user.is_active():
        return None
    return user

app = Flask(__name__)
app.secret_key = 'secret'
lm = LoginManager()
lm.init_app(app)
lm.user_loader(load_user)
lm.session_protection = "strong"

flex = FlexRestManager(db_base=Base, db_session_callback=get_session)
flex.init_app(app)

user_bp = Blueprint('user_rest', __name__)


class UserRestApiHandler(RestApiHandler):
    resource_class = User

user_resource = RestApiResource(
    name="user",
    route="/user",
    app=user_bp,
    decorators=[login_required],
    handler=UserRestApiHandler())


book_bp = Blueprint('book_rest', __name__)


class BookRestApiHandler(RestApiHandler):
    resource_class = Book

book_resource = RestApiResource(
    name="book",
    route="/book",
    app=book_bp,
    decorators={'get': [login_required]},
    handler=BookRestApiHandler())

app.register_blueprint(user_bp, url_prefix='/api/v1')
app.register_blueprint(book_bp, url_prefix='/api/v1')


@app.route('/login')
def login():
    dbs = get_session()
    user = dbs.query(User).first()
    login_user(user)
    return redirect(url_for('index'))


@app.route('/logout')
def logout():
    logout_user()
    return redirect(url_for('index'))


@app.route('/')
def index():
    username = current_user.username if current_user.is_authenticated() \
        else 'N/A'
    return '''
    <h3> an example for flexrest </h3>
    <a href="/login"> login </a> | <a href="/logout"> logout </a>
    <p>Login by: <b>{username}</b></p>
    Books:
    <ul>
        <li><a href='/api/v1/book/'>Books list</a></li>
        <li><a href='/api/v1/book/1/'>Book#1 (Need authorization)</a></li>
        <li><a href='/api/v1/book/2/'>Book#2 (Need authorization)</a></li>
    </ul>
    Users(Need authorization):
    <ul>
        <li><a href='/api/v1/user/'>Users list</a></li>
        <li><a href='/api/v1/user/1/'>User#1</a></li>
        <li><a href='/api/v1/user/2/'>User#2</a></li>
    </ul>
    '''.format(username=username)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='localhost', port=5000, debug=False)

Licence

MIT

Requirements

  • flask

  • flask-principal

  • formencode

  • sqlalchemy

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/pprolancer/flexrest.git
$ cd flexrest
$ python setup.py install

or

$ pip install flexrest

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